Kevin Lingenfelter

Kevin Lingenfelter (5 June 1931-18 November 1984), also known as Erich Hoss, Louis Kremmer, Karl Wurst, Kurt Junker, or Curt Walker, was an East German citizen who was a member of the Stasi intelligence agency. A former Hitler Youth member during World War II, he became a spy for the Soviet Union in the 1950s. He was later booted from the KGB when he released all of his findings to the Stasi, and his Soviet identity was cleared. Lingenfelter worked for the Stasi from the 1950s to 1980, starting spy rings across West Germany and participating in many terrorist/espionage activities in West Germany. Lingenfelter defected to the CIA in 1983 after he began attempts to flee to America in 1980, as he was paranoid that NATO would one day get him. Lingenfelter worked for the CIA until his assassination in 1984.

Biography
Kevin Lingenfelter was born on 5 July 1931 in Elsteraue in the Saxony-Anhalt region of the Weimar Republic, located in present-day Germany. Lingenfelter became a soldier of the Hitler Youth at the age of 12 in 1943 and was trained in combat under the Wehrmacht in 1944-45, when he fought against the Soviet Union in World War II. Lingenfelter was captured in April 1945 by the Red Army and was interned in a reeducation camp in Siberia for many years. During this time, the Soviet Ministry of State Security (MGB) offered him his life if he would become a spy for them. Under the name "Erich Hoss", Lingenfelter returned to Germany, now split between the capitalist West Germany and the communist East Germany.

Hoss traveled to Dresden in 1951, where he met with Stasi contact "Adrian Hamburger", a code-name for the apartment building owner Fritz Sachs. Hamburger and Hoss worked together in spotting enemies of the regime of East Germany and built up a ring of spies for East Germany that could be spread to other areas of Germany. The "Hoss Group" was first documented in KGB databases in 1953, when their operative "Rudolf Keller" (Adolf Muenchen) being thrown in a prison for the shooting of the West Berlin civil servant Arthur Thurmann.

Hoss' success in establishing a spy group in Dresden and the success of a few of his group's missions were met by crackdowns against East German spies in West German cities like Brunswick and Hanover, not too far from East Germany's border. Hoss worked with the Stasi secret police of East Germany after 1954, when he met with the Stasi head in Gera, Beck Hartmann. Hoss and Hartmann reached an agreement to share their files, so Lingenfelter was terminated from the Soviet KGB, labelled as a traitor. "Erich Hoss" was now Lingenfelter's only name, as his history was erased from the KGB by incineration, shredders, and scissors.

With the Stasi as his priority now, Hoss turned his group from KGB agents to Stasi operatives and in 1955 was held responsible for the stealing of American CIA files that detailed Operation Justice Hammer, a plan for the United States, United Kingdom, West Germany, and France to invade East Germany if the Soviet Union was ever found out to be planning an invasion of West Germany. Hoss kept the American files and refused to turn them in to the Stasi, fearing that a war would start and his organization would be forced to go underground to avoid Allied detection. Hoss later burnt the plans, as they held no purpose after the USA and USSR reached an agreement to lighten border security in 1955. Hoss took advantage of this development by moving his group into Kassel, Nuremberg, and Frankfurt in West Germany.

Hoss was nearly assassinated at the Nuremberg Train Station on 27 September 1956 as he planned to take a train to Munich, where he was to meet Stasi informant "Gertrud Becker" (Luisa Macher), a maid who worked for a US embassy official. Hoss met with her and lived across the street from the embassy official without any qualification, passing himself off as an West German embassy official who lived in the area. Hoss was able to receive reports on the embassy staff every week, and he made further progress by planting cameras in the church of Munich.

From 1957 to 1960, Hoss resumed his spy activities across West Germany, and he was able to derail a train heading from Nuremberg to Frankfurt at Wurzburg with a few C4 explosives placed under the railroad. The train was carrying sensitive documents recovered through a mole in the Stasi, and they were destroyed after the crash. For Hoss, blowing things up and killing rivals was all in a day's work. He set up a spy ring in Stuttgart in Baden-Wurttemberg in 1961 and one in Karlsruhe in the same state. The Karlsruhe spymaster "Georg Klock" (Johann Feldman) was later killed in a bombing of his car outside the police headquarters by the MI6 or CIA, who sent contacts Irma Schonfinkel and Alfred Albrecht to plant a bomb on the back of the car.

For the duration of the 1960s, Hoss made contact with West German Stasi agents and was able to steal many documents from the West Germans. Hoss assisted the Baader-Meinhof Gang in their attacks on West Germany and the Western Allies, and Hoss gained some support from the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya intelligence in the late 1960s. However, in 1973 Hoss was shot in the chest by Bernhart Schiele, an agent of West Germany, while he was walking out of a meeting with Stasi agents in an apartment in Aschaffenburg in northwest Bavaria. He narrowly survived due to blood transplants, but he became aware of the dangers of his group.

The insistence of the Hoss Group to resume their activities led to Hoss returning to East Germany for a new assignment. The Stasi were able to clear Lingenfelter's past and Hoss faded away into memory, and Lingenfelter assumed the new identity of "Louis Kremmer". Louis Kremmer was born in Bamberg and was an aspiring newspaper editor, so Lingenfelter was sent to Frankfurt-am-Main (Frankfurt) to organize a new spy ring. The Hoss Group was returned to normalcy as their identities were cleared and their alibis torn apart, and the old group dissolved. Kremmer hired Elma Nimmitz, a fellow worker at the newspaper office, and Wendelin Buerger, a mailman, as agents of his new Stasi ring. Nimmitz was able to deliver classified news to Kremmer rather than completely throw them away, and Buerger was able to deliver disinformation to political opponents to discourage them. Kremmer's new identity worker well with his new group, and in 1975 he was given a special office in Brandenburg-an-der-Havel from which he ran operations in the two Germanies.

In 1978, Kremmer retrieved information on the activities of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan that was called the "Kremmer Report". The report detailed the preparations of the Mujahideen to fight against the government that Hafizullah Amin was in charge of, and the report could have given the Soviet Army an advantage over the Afghans. However, the Stasi did not release the report to the KGB out of fear that it would be intercepted by the Western Allies first. Indeed, a CIA black room in Leszno, Poland retrieved a few of the Stasi reports from Kremmer while they were telefaxed to Moscow. One of them was close to revealing the true identity of Kremmer, but the translator mistranslated the document and failed to recognize the statement.

Kremmer was put under scrutiny by the Stasi in 1980 after it was believed that Kremmer was beginning to send telefaxes to the United States that detailed the Stasi command structure. Kremmer was paranoid at the time and began to take sleeping pills to calm him down, and he became a liability. For this reason, the Stasi had to cut their ties to him and delete his files from their computer. Louis Kremmer no longer existed and he was forced to leave his job when he felt that the Stasi would come search for him at his office.

On 11 June 1981, Lingenfelter was shot at by a team of ten special forces from West Germany while in the city of Essen. Lingenfelter's plan was to take a train from Essen to Nijmegen in the Netherlands, drive to Arnhem, fly to London in the United Kingdom, and there he would speak with the MI6 to absolve him of his crimes if he would become their informant. Lingenfelter's plans were stopped by three bullets, although he killed five of the special forces with a Beretta pistol. Lingenfelter was hospitalized, and he had to flee wearing a doctor's clothing and without his belongings. He left behind a suitcase that contained a passport to Denmark, $6,000,000, a pistol and 50 rounds of ammunition, five sandwiches, a toothbrush, two bottles of toothpaste, two large bottles of water, and a computer. Lingenfelter's suitcase was taken in by the Stasi, who decided that he was headed for Denmark. They sent a team to Odense, where they captured a small house and ran a new spy operation there. However, they failed to locate Lingenfelter and were forced to return home in 1982.

That same year, Lingenfelter went under the identity of "Karl Wurst", which was the name on his doctor uniform. He claimed that he was a Viennese doctor who was seeking to head to the United States to attend a medical school, but failed to obtain American citizenship because he could not name the capital of the state of Iowa. "Doctor Wurst" drove a car into Belgium after escaping border police, raising red flags and causing a search warrant to be released demanding his arrest or death. Wurst lived in a former Stasi base near the Soviet embassy in Brussels, where he applied for English citizenship. Wurst succeeded in this attempt, but because he left most of his money behind in Essen, he was unable to pay the airfaire.

Instead, Wurst decided to become a crime doctor and was involved with the black market selling of organs in an attempt to get enough money to flee to the United Kingdom. He was arrested by Belgium on 11 December 1982 after Belgian special forces found out about one such deal and captured him and three other participants. Wurst was identified as Lingenfelter and was brought up on charges of espionage, illegal selling of organs, and third-degree murder. Lingenfelter evaded the murder and espionage charges by claiming that he was fleeing from East Germany to avoid the Stasi, and he was instead sent to a prison in Bruges, where he was to serve time for the selling of organs.

Lingenfelter made his escape on 12 January 1983, jumping in a garbage container and hiding out until he was dumped into a garbage heap in the city center of Bruge. Lingenfelter obtained regular clothing by stealing it from a car trunk, where he also obtained some money and a British passport. Lingenfelter left for the UK in March under the alias of "Kurt Junker", claiming that he was a newspaper editor from Bonn, West Germany that wanted to write for a British paper. His escape was successful and he was dropped off in London with $50 and a few clothes. Lingenfelter gave his money to a taxi driver so that he could be taken to the American embassy, where he told the staff his true identity. Lingenfelter requested asylum in the United States so that he could work with the CIA in prosecuting Stasi and KGB operatives in the United States. Lingenfelter was picked up by the CIA at the embassy five hours later and driven to a black site in Llanelli, Wales, where he talked with the CIA operatives. He secured a chance to head to the USA and away from the Stasi, and became known as "Curt Walker", an average American man. Walker was given $500,000 and a house in David City, Butler County, Nebraska.

From his house in Nebraska, Walker was able to write down all of the information that he knew from his Stasi experience and handed it in to CIA officials. Much of it was confirmed through a mole in the Stasi, and his word was taken. His suitcase in Essen was captured by some CIA operatives that shot down a small plane en route to Yaroslavl in the Russian SFSR, and the CIA were abe to take all of its contents. The notes were of use, but with the Stasi database cleared of Lingenfelter's past activities and instead filled with tools used for their seeking of his capture, the CIA were unable to gather as much information as they had planned from him. They bade him call his former Hoss Group to gather their notes, but only 4 out of the original 20 were still alive and 2 of them were living in other countries. "Ernst Messerschmidt" moved to Taiwan after the Stasi began their hunt for Lingenfelter, and "Lily Baumann" moved to New Jersey in the United States after she returned to normalcy. The other two, Robert Kees and Gregor Kazanov, were working with the Stasi to hunt Lingenfelter down. The 16 of them that died were mainly dead due to old age or natural causes, but at least five of them were dead from murder. Lingenfelter failed to contact any of them himself, but the CIA later reached out to Baumann through her carpet cleaner (a CIA agent) and talked with Messerschmidt through the Taiwanese National Security Bureau office in San Francisco. The two gave in their documents but censored any mention of their own names so as to not self-incriminate themselves. Lingenfelter had no contact with them while the investigations were going on.

Lingenfelter/Walker was discovered by the Stasi when Messerschmidt was captured by the KGB and shipped to the People's Republic of China by PT boat, where he was taken by the KGB office in Shanghai and forced to go to Moscow. There, he revealed that Lingenfelter was working for the United States, although he was unsure of where he was or if he was even working with the CIA (he had not contacted him since the 1960s). The Stasi kept tabs on any mention of Lingenfelter's name, although "Curt Walker" was well-hidden in rural Nebraska.

Curt Walker was warned of the threat to his life by the CIA, who found out from an embassy agent in Shanghai about the KGB black operation through a meeting with a PRC mole in the KGB. He was moved to Washington County in the remote desert of Colorado, near the town of Sterling. Curt Walker's identity was buried in the sand and he was renamed "Joseph Hicks", a dirt farmer who was growing some crops for himself to live. Since his house had no electricity, he was forced to use a telegram to talk with the CIA.

In June 1984, one of his telegraphs was picked up by the KGB in one of their American bases in St. Joseph, Missouri, a base usually used to observe American missile silos in the area. Now, the base had more purpose, as the KGB found their old enemy. The Stasi were alerted to the presence of Joseph Hicks in the USA, and they sent a small team of 15 operatives to Kansas City International Airport to meet up with the 5 KGB spies in the area, and they together planned to find Hicks.

The CIA were unsure of the presence of the communists because the telegraph was unprovoked, so the CIA were not expecting one from Hicks. It detailed his electricity problem and had a request to a move to a new home, and with its interception, the CIA sent no reply to Hicks' request. Hicks instead stayed in his house, and he lived in semi-retirement. He was unable to do anything but sit down in his house, eat, and sleep, and he could not leave within 50 feet of his home out of fear that a Soviet satellite could capture a picture of him.

In September 1984, the Soviets gained another clue about Hicks' location when they intercepted a telegraph to the CIA involving a renewed request for a move from his home. They captured the location of the home that he wanted, one in Loveland, Colorado. The Soviets entered the city in disguise and entered the house, but were shooed off by its owner, not Hicks. The telegraph about Hicks' arrival in his house on 1 November 1984 was not picked up, but a telegraph asking for a computer was, on 5 November.

On 18 November 1984, the Stasi and KGB launched their assault on Hicks' home. Hicks was armed with a shotgun and two M1911 pistols, and the Stasi and KGB agents were equipped with AK-74us, AK-47s, Makarovs, and some Molotov cocktails. They threw the cocktails at his home and it burst into flames, and Hicks made his last stand by gearing up. He was able to kill a total of sixteen operatives with his weapons, but the four remaining KGB and Stasi agents succeeded in shooting the burning roof of the house, causing some debris to fall. The whole apartment building went into flames, and the corpses of the dead communist spies were incinerated, removing the evidence of spies staying on US soil. The four remaining spies fled the building as it began to crumble, and as Lingenfelter ran out the doorway to pursue the spies fleeing in their car, the wood on top of the door collapsed and crushed Lingenfelter, breaking his back and burning him. He died immediately, and the KGB and Stasi took pictures of his body before they fled.

Lingenfelter's files in the CIA, KGB, and Stasi databases were erased in 1990 as Germany was reunified, as the KGB had finished their assassination of him, the Stasi did not want to reveal that he was present in places where he should not have been (and did not want others to know of his betrayal and near-escape), and the CIA did not want to keep information on a traitor whose induction as a US citizen was controversial. The DGSE and MI6 followed in 1991 after the Cold War ended, as there was no need for his files anymore because he was dead. Belgium erased his arrest records and West Germany erased his hospital bills because he was a dead man with no connections to any other crimes, and Denmark erased the log of his passport, as it was never used. The Netherlands deleted the information on his train ticket because he did not reach the country, and the West German police and embassies removed their logs on his attacks because he died as an ally of the West. His telephone calls were purposefully garbled by the CIA and KGB to remove all information on classified subjects and the old Hoss Group and his spy rings were broken up through a wave of arrests by the CIA and the new country of Germany. The FSB of Russia proceeded to erase all records of the operation to kidnap him from Taiwan, and Lingenfelter's Soviet reeducation camp records were also deleted with the camp itself. His earliest records, which were his birth certificate and Hitler Youth member list, were lost in time, virtually deleting his name from existence.